PHOTO BY ANGELICA ROMO
ILLUSTRATION BY BARBARA TAYLOR
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with children, we can engage the community indirectly. We are fortunate to be able to involve the local educational system in an innovative way that empowers children to generate possible conservation solutions. We have found that teachers and their students are immensely creative in finding locally appropriate conservation solutions. Often these two groups are the motivators within the community as well-respected (teachers) or influential (students) voices. Any parent knows the influence their children can have if they are passionate about an issue! If communities can collectively identify the issues affecting local biodiversity and how to address them, they are more likely to support the solutions they propose to solve conservation issues. To this end, we are working with local Mexican education experts to create a curriculum entitled Del Mar a las Montañas (From the Sea to the Mountains) in San Felipe, Baja California, Mexico, for primary and middle school students. The curriculum’s broad scope includes the California condor, bighorn Above, from left to right: Luis Ramirez and Samantha Young; San sheep, peninsular pronghorn, the gigantic native cardón cacFelipe local community leader Martin Romo; UCSD Engineers for Exploration student Antonella Wilby; and San Diego Zoo Safari Park tus, and the vaquita. Teachers are being trained how to use an Associate Curator Andy Blue worked with the community and schools inquiry-based learning approach with their students to enable in San Felipe, Baja California. them to work creatively and more independently. Children will then encourage their family and friends to investigate a cona generalist, an apex predator surviving on smaller, more abundant servation problem, suggest a possible solution, and then present the marine creatures, keeping their populations in check and the ecoidea to their own community. system in balance. The children first learn about the amazing biodiversity found in Unfortunately for the vaquita, shrimp is an extremely popular the upper Baja Peninsula and the conservation threats that face the commodity. Shrimp fishing in this area traditionally relies upon five species featured in the curriculum. Then, they interview fammany miles of gill nets hanging in long, deadly columns in the ily and friends who may be directly involved in the situation. This ocean that can entangle vaquitas and cause them to drown. Shrimp community discussion helps the children suggest locally approprifishing in the Gulf of California is a big business: over $10 million ate conservation solutions. in gross sales annually. Most of the shrimp end up on plates in the The last step in this process will be a celebratory presentation of United States, and shrimp fishing is an important economic force their work to the community during the Baja Biodiversity Festival in communities in the upper Gulf of California. However, if shrimp this fall. Local cultural plays, dances, songs, paintings, murals, and fishing continues using the current techniques, we are likely to lose other products will be the centerpiece of this festival. Best of all, bethe vaquita. cause the children will have interviewed local community leaders, How can people in Mexico who make their living from fishing be we expect that their family and friends will be more interested in motivated to support the conservation of a species that could be perworking to conserve their national ecological and cultural heritage. ceived as a threat to their livelihood? How can we help them be more It is hoped that some of the children’s ideas will stimulate discuswilling to exchange their current gillnetting approach for an altersion among the community and instill optimism for the future connative that is less likely to harm vaquitas? We hope that by working servation of the vaquita—and the rest of Baja’s biodiversity! SAN DIEGO ZOO GLOBAL
SANDIEGOZOO.ORG
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